


Guilty Redemption

by TheAzureFox



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, M/M, Shuichi you fucking idiot, implied time-travelling, speed - Freeform, the card game, touchstarved characters bc i love sensory writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24885094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAzureFox/pseuds/TheAzureFox
Summary: He sucks in a breath. Shuffles his feet. Holds up a hand. Lowers it. Bites on his bottom lip. Stops. Raises his hand again-“Go the fuck away.” Says a voice that sounds like Kokichi. “I know you’re out there.”-and lowers it again.Something is wrong with Kokichi.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi, implied Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Comments: 7
Kudos: 266
Collections: Quality Fics





	Guilty Redemption

“Something’s strange about Kokichi.”

Shuichi is sitting in Kaito’s research lab when the boy brings up the discussion, relaxing on some sort of star-theme couch as he participates in a hefty round of Speed. He holds the cards in his hand, thumbing through them in consideration. However, before he can make a plausible move, Maki slaps down a five of spades and both he and Kaito are left scowling at her as they reconsider their next move.

“If you ask me," Maki says with a snort, “that little asshole has always been strange.”

“He’s always going off about being a supreme leader and all,” Kaito agrees nonchalantly, slapping down a four of diamonds. “Yet now he’s suddenly acting like he doesn’t give a damn about anything anymore.”

Shuichi draws from his deck, furrows his eyebrows, and then pulls a five of clovers from his hand, intent on slapping it down, when Maki beats him to the punch with a three of spades. He groans, retracting his card, and decides to slap a diamond joker onto the other pile with the queen of hearts.

“Nice,” Kaito says, grinning at him widely with a playful jab to his side.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. Shuichi shuffles his cards around, pondering his next move, when he decides to speak. “Isn’t Kokichi acting a little weird?”

“Dude, he’s _always_ been weird.” Kaito chuckles. Then frowns. “But you’re not wrong. Still can’t believe he’s been acting as moody as he has.”

“He shut himself in his room the other day,” Maki agrees. “And as much as I hate that awful little prick it does concern me that he hasn’t been harping on us at all lately.”

Kaito chuckles at her too. “Harping?” He asks.

Maki shoots him a glare and he only grins, slapping down an ace of spades before Maki can do so with her ace of hearts.

“Ugh.” She says.

There’s a moment of silence between the trio, each focusing on their individual hand of cards, before Shuichi decides to pipe in.

“He talked with me a little the other day.”

“And?” Maki glances over at him, frowns, and then jabs Kaito in the side when he takes advantage yet again of her distraction. The purple-haired boy wheezes but Shuichi can tell from the smile on his face that he’s enjoying Maki’s annoyance.

“Before he went…well, like that…he said he had a headache.”

“Headache?”

“The one aspirin can’t cure,” Shuichi has the luck of drawing two cards that fit simultaneously on the pile. He slaps them down and then grins at his clear victory - hands and deck now empty of cards.

“Fuck man,” Kaito says, shuffling the cards and resetting their decks. “But what’s a headache got to do with him suddenly being all mopey and nihilistic and shit?”

“Well he hasn’t said anything about a headache since he…since he started being weird.”

“So?” Maki accepts her hand from Kaito, stiffening when their fingers noticeably touch and linger. She pulls away and seems to busy herself with her hand, ignoring Kaito’s teasing grin as he hands Shuichi his part of the deck.

“He might’ve been lying about the headache,” Kaito offers, starting off the round and immediately putting down a king before the rest of them can act. “Wouldn’t put it past the brat to be trying to gain some sympathy out of ya.”

Shuichi pauses. “Me?” He asks.

Maki snorts. “Kokichi’s soft for you.” She states the sentence like it’s the most simple fact in the world. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed him following you around and pandering for your attention like a little puppy.”

The black-haired boy furrows his eyebrows. “I think you’re mistaking something here,” he huffs. “I don’t think Kokichi is…soft…for me but rather…well, I guess he likes to rile me up?”

“Nah man.” Kaito clicks his tongue. “If anything he likes to rile _Maki_ and _Miu_ up but you? Dude, that guy’s got it out for you.”

Shuichi frowns but doesn’t continue that train of thought. “Regardless, he hasn’t once complained about his headache since. Which, I do think was sincere.” He pauses in reminisce. “After all, I don’t think I’d have caught him trying to snatch my aspirin if he wasn’t in desperate need of it.”

Here, Kaito scowls. “That brat tried to steal your stuff?”

He stares at the two of them, flustering. “Not steal, per say. More like…trying to grab it when he thought I wasn’t looking.”

“So stealing,” Maki says flatly.

“…Maybe.”

Maki snorts. “And? What correlation does his headache have with him being the most depressed teenager on the face of the earth?”

“He hasn’t complained about the headache even once since yesterday.”

“Yeah? So? We know that. You’ve said as much already.”

“Well…since I think his headache was genuine yesterday, if he was done with it by now, he’d definitely have given me my aspirin back.”

“You sure about that?” Kaito asks. “Kokichi doesn’t exactly scream _trustworthy_ to me.”

“…I’m sure he didn’t lie about giving it back to me when he told me as much the day before yesterday.” Shuichi puts down an ace of clubs. “Furthermore, if he still had that headache, I doubt it would affect him so severely that he’d shut himself away in his room and complain about us all being dead all of a sudden.”

“Maybe the stress of a migraine made him go delusional,” Maki suggests with a grimace. “Or maybe he’s just faking his sudden bout of depression. It wouldn’t past me if he suddenly went ‘uu-wuu I’m depressed oh no uu-wuu’ and all that just to get some attention.”

Kaito raises his eyebrows at Maki’s pronunciation of the “uwu” emoticon and seems to fluster with a shade of surprised pink on his cheeks. When the girl turns to glare at him, that pink color turns into a bashful red and the boy hums to himself, seemingly grinning at the girl’s attention.

“I don’t know,” Shuichi puts down a card, pulls from his deck, puts that card down too. “He seemed pretty serious about driving us all away from his room.”

“And did a pretty successful job of it,” Kaito growls. “He sure knows how to piss everyone here off to hell and back.”

“He called you a failed astronaut, did he not?” Shuichi says with sympathy, all too aware of Kokichi’s jaunts, and then flicks his gaze from Kaito to Maki. “And mocked you for…something about feelings?”

“Please don’t,” Maki curls her nails into her cards. “I don’t want to remember what that _dick_ said to me.”

Shuichi nods. “Kokichi wasn’t exactly kind in his words. But it doesn’t make sense to me. Why drive us away for no apparent reason? Even if he does still have a headache it’s not enough to warrant insulting all of the students here to keep them from checking in on him.”

Kaito empties his hand to the point he only has one card. Shuichi looks at his hand (five cards left), and then at Maki’s (who holds two cards left) and hums to himself.

“What I’m saying is,” he continues, eyeing the four of aces and the 10 of hearts laying in front of him that he each has cards for, “I think someone did something to hurt Kokichi. And badly. Enough to make him want to shut everyone out.”

There’s palpable tension in the air now. Kaito and Maki have paused in their game, gazes both latching onto Shuichi as they ponder his words.

“Do you think someone might have motive to kill him?” Kaito asks.

“Or that Kokichi has motive to kill someone else instead?”

“I’m…not sure,” Shuichi teases both cards in his hand with a thumb. “But I think one of us should go and talk to him.”

Maki shakes her head, some tension easing from her. “I’m not going to bother talking to him. At best he won’t talk to me and at worst he says something that will make me want to wring his neck again.”

“I’m out too,” Kaito says, scratching the back of his neck. “Kokichi and I don’t have the best relationship. Plus, I’m still pissed about his comment to me earlier.”

Shuichi frowns, gently putting a card down. He watches as neither Maki nor Kaito make a move and then places down another. Maki sheds one card from her hand, the two of them watching Kaito, before the boy grimaces at the both of them, still clutching onto his one and only card remaining.

“I can go and check up on him then,” Shuichi says, as if he hasn’t been thinking of an excuse to go and do just that all day. He places down a queen of spades.

Immediately, Kaito slaps down a king of hearts at the same time Maki slaps down her own king of diamonds and the two of them jump into the air, flushing, before Kaito retrieves his card from on top of Maki’s and rubs the back of his neck.

“Y-Yeah,” Kaito says, voice suddenly high-pitched as he looks pointedly at Shuichi. “If you can do that for us, it’d be great. Can’t leave someone like him unattended after all.”

Shuichi places his hand down on the desk, letting his remaining cards spread out as he stands to his feet. He stretches, shaking the restlessness from his limbs, before he nods his head at Kaito and Maki, noting their red faces, and takes to exit Kaito’s research lab. Soft whispers follow at his backside, romance-tinged murmurings echoed in their voices, and something inside of Shuichi tells him he has got to be quick about leaving the room lest he bear witness to…unsavory things…

He shuts the door to Kaito’s lab behind him and peers into both sides of the hallways. There is no one in sight but that does little to alleviate Shuichi’s fears. While not suspicious in the least of his classmates, eager to think them of conscious soul and mind, he is not so naive as to believe he will be left unscathed, either. All of them were normal students with superior talents. And, while it was perhaps unthinkable to deem them as murderers, Shuichi knows better than anyone that, if given a motive and a chance, they will be quick to turn on their fellow classmates.

Keeping this in mind, he creeps through the empty hallways of Hope’s Peak Academy, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling with every footstep he makes. Even still, he hasn’t grown quite used to this academy. It is far too quiet and far too desolate for him to relax in, his setting far too like a diorama to be comfortably settled in.

Still, he hurries his way down corridors made of wood and forest, descending down flights of stairs in order to arrive at the floor of his destination. He passes Tsumugi on the way there, the blue-haired girl greeting him with only a passing nod. Shuichi nods in return, thinking it only polite, before he comes to stand in front of a door painted a dark - almost black - shade of purple.

He sucks in a breath. Shuffles his feet. Holds up a hand. Lowers it. Bites on his bottom lip. Stops. Raises his hand again-

“Go the fuck away.” Says a voice that sounds like Kokichi. “I know you’re out there.”

-and lowers it again.

“I just want to talk to you,” Shuichi says. “I’m worried.”

Silence.

He frowns, contemplating what he should do next. Should he go away, like Kokichi has asked? But that would be irresponsible, would it not? He had come on the request of Kaito and Maki to investigate Kokichi’s suspicious state of being. He couldn’t just walk away.

Or could he? There was certainly a pit of stress building in his stomach at standing so awkwardly outside another’s door. Shuichi is tempted to just back away, to tell himself that Kokichi needs some time alone and it’s okay to just up and leave, but he chides himself for entertaining such thoughts. Kokichi is a friend - albeit a presumptuous one - and Shuichi wouldn’t be able to forgive his own cowardice if he doesn’t at least see this through.

A click.

The door opens.

Kokichi stares at him from behind the door, peeking around the corner like some sort of child afraid of meeting his parent’s gaze. There’s an uncertain shyness to Kokichi’s actions, an unfounded sense of disturbance furrowed on his brow, and Shuichi quickly finds himself frowning as the boy gives him a look full of glazed eyes and disassociation.

“Are you…okay, Kokichi?” He asks, tentatively, his voice almost cooing, soft and soothing.

There’s something like a scoff from the other, a bitter vile sounding akin to a snarl as Kokichi says, with a frown: “If the dead came knocking on your door, would you be okay?”

Shuichi blinks at that. Pauses. And then flusters, rapidly becoming uncomfortable with the situation he’s locked himself in.

There’s a click of the door, the rattling of a chain, and then Kokichi opens his door with a sigh, beckoning Shuichi in. The boy flounders, wondering if he should take the invitation when it seems Kokichi tires of his hesitance. The boy yanks him inside, grip fragile yet desperate all at once, and Shuichi has no choice but to step inside.

The black-haired boy is quickly escorted to a bed lush with pillows and blankets, forced to sit atop of it, and made even more uncomfortable as Kokichi eases him down with fingers that feel like a feather’s kiss on top of his shoulders.

“Uh,” Shuichi says the first word that comes to mind. Then, he shuts his mouth as Kokichi looks at him, withering tremendously under the strangeness of the other boy’s gaze.

Violet eyes alight with shades of purple pierce through him, sharp and calculating and full of a miasma of secrecy. Yet, there’s something strangely wrong about those eyes, something too disturbing about the way Kokichi rakes his eyes over Shuichi or the way his face softens like he’s viewing something he hasn’t seen in years.

 _Nostalgia_.

Kokichi looks like he’s witnessing nostalgia.

A perplexing conclusion, one Shuichi immediately finds doubts in, but what is more surprising than Kokichi being indulged in nostalgia (especially in a place where nostalgia is almost nonexistent) is the way that Kokichi sits down beside him.

The bed dips under the other boy’s weight, silken covers drooping as Kokichi sidles at Shuichi’s side. There’s an immediate off-putting lack of distance that separates him from the boy with the purple eyes, an immediate sense of dissonance that has Shuichi recoiling. He scoots away as subtly as he can, thinking Kokichi’s actions an accidental occurrence, but is surprised to see Kokichi’s eyes widening as he does so.

“As I thought,” the boy muses, offering no charges of offense. “You’re really not that close to me, are you?”

Shuichi pauses. Frowns. And then looks at Shuichi with a mouth full of questions and no sound coming out.

“Forgive me,” Kokichi says, looking away. “It’s…surreal.”

 _What is?_ He wants to ask. Instead, he says: “You’re talking funny.”

The boy beside him snorts at that, almost sneering at some invisible entity as he looks at the wall in front of him. “What do you want me to say?” His voice shifts to something high-pitched and whinny in tone. “ _Shuichi, you dolt! I don’t talk funny! You’re the one who talks all funny and weird!_ ” A pause and then Kokichi leers at him. “Something like that, I suppose?”

“U-Uh yeah…that’s how you’d normally speak, isn’t it?”

Kokichi fixes him with a hard stare. The boy looks back, abashed at the cold abrasiveness of Kokichi’s behavior and fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.

Then, much to his surprise, something almost touches the underside of his chin. He yelps, startled, but is even more shook to find Kokichi is tipping his head upwards, an arm reaching out to push his chin around.

“K-Kokichi?” He says in a voice that has long since lost its nerve. “What are you…?”

But the boy doesn’t answer. Instead, he leans close to Shuichi, violet eyes appraising something Shuichi doesn’t understand. The black-haired boy flusters, fidgeting under the scrutinizing intensity of Kokichi’s gaze, before he is surprised ever further by the way Kokichi asks:

“May I hug you?”

He’s so baffled by the question that he nods his head without thinking of what in the hell Kokichi has just asked for. But the affirmation is enough for Kokichi to pull him inwards, to wrap his arms around Shuichi like a koala bear seeking comfort-

And _wow_ Shuichi is _really not_ understanding what in the heck is _going on right now_.

Even stranger, however, is the way Kokichi rests his head in the crook of Shuichi’s neck, breath grazing the area where his neck meets his shoulder. It sends a strange shudder down the boy, making him tingle with an uncanny sense of pleasure. It makes Shuichi feel almost starved for touch, yearning for something he can’t quite speak of, desiring something that makes goosebumps riddle his skin so, and yet the fact that _Kokichi_ is _clinging to him_ speaks way more volume about the weirdness of his situation than his touch starved skin does.

“Shuichi,” Kokichi murmurs, “did God give me another chance?”

The boy doesn’t know what to say to that. So he doesn’t. Instead, he takes to wrapping his arms around Kokichi, returning the hug with complete awkwardness. As if emboldened by Shuichi’s action, Kokichi hugs him tighter, fingers digging into Shuichi’s sides, and when the boy winces he finds, much to his bafflement, that he can hear _sobs_ resounding from the boy beside him.

“Hey Kokichi…what’s wrong?” He asks, sympathy getting the better of him. He threads his fingers through the boy’s hair, instantly taking on the role of a reassuring figure. “Can you tell me so I can help you somehow?”

However, Kokichi doesn’t answer him. Instead, the boy’s sobs grow louder, uncontrollable, and it’s in a panic that Shuichi is left sitting there, unsure of how to handle the situation and yet unable to leave. He’s never seen Kokichi in this kind of state before. Yes, sure, he’s seen Kokichi cry before with tears and sob stories dripping from his face but…there’s a strange kind of rawness about this particular session, a seeping bile of emotions dripping that feels too real to be another round of crocodile crying.

“You can’t help me,” Kokichi says, nose pressed into the shoulder lining of his jacket. “You aren’t him.”

“Aren’t…who?”

This, Kokichi doesn’t answer. So Shuichi goes quiet, letting the boy cry his eyes out as he takes to patting the boy’s back. They sit there in silence for a long time. But all Shuichi can think is:

_What's going on with him?_

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I have only just started this game, I know a lot of spoilers about this game, I surprisingly have read a lot of fanfic about this game, and no I do not know how the plot works in this game
> 
> That said, I wanted to write a fanfic playing around with an idea I've wanted to see but haven't quite yet aside from in Kokichiouma's Reaching fanfic (which I'm guessing most of the fandom has read already but if not - go read it it's so good. Will I continue this idk because I started this on an accidental whim and know absolutely nothing about the game's actual timeline but I do,,, very much,,, love the idea of time-traveling Kokichi (and maybe Shuichi) in the same 'verse together,,,


End file.
